LEGO Hits the Jackpot

I’m not afraid that my son will be lured over to the dark side by violent toys. But I do worry that a constant influx of police-state centered or militaristic entertainment will make him think that mobile police units and surveillance helicopters are normal parts of the landscape.

by James Corbett
The International Forecaster

There’s a big mural that lines the wall of the toy department in our local electronics store. It’s an advertisement for some line of Japanese action figures that I’m (thankfully) unfamiliar with, a team of nearly identical red-and-silver-clad Mighty Morphing Power Ranger lookalikes. The mural shows them lined up side by side, each striking some sort of heroic-looking pose. Lit from behind with a type of starburst aura, the central figure is giving some version of the Nazi/Bellamy salute.

[…] My son likes to play in the toy department while daddy shops for printer ink and external disk drives and other such supplies. But as my son plays with the toy trains or uses the toy cash register my eye keeps getting drawn to that mural looking down on us. It’s violent, menacing and off-putting in a way that’s difficult to put my finger on.

But perhaps I’m not alone in noticing the dark turn of the toy department into some type of indoctrination for the police state. We’ve already looked at how kids games are indoctrinating the next generation of children into the cashless society, but now a team of researchers in New Zealand is highlighting another ominous development: LEGO is becoming more violent.

LEGO, the Denmark-based children’s building block manufacturer, has long prided itself on avoiding violence as a primary play incentive. But as the advent of video games and other high-tech toys began to erode their share of the market the company ran into financial difficulty, almost going bankrupt in 2003.

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